Chapter 55 3. Revelation

Through the religion of art the spirit progresses from the form of the substance to that of the subject; for the religion of art produces the spirit its own form and imparts to it an action or self-consciousness which simply disappears in the frightening substance, It is impossible to understand itself in simple trust in God.This incarnation of the divine essence begins with the statue, in which there is only the external form of the ego, but the inner essence of the ego, its agency, falls outside of it.But in the ritual of adoration the two sides become one, and in the results of the religion of art this unity is accomplished and at the same time passes over to the side of the ego [predominance]; In the spirit all (external) essences [or substantialities] are sunk and lost.This sense of relief is best expressed in this proposition: the Self is the essence of the Absolute.The essence or substance, which once had the ego as its accident, is now reduced to a predicate, and the spirit, in this self-consciousness, opposed to it by nothing of essential form, contains this opposition. Consciousness disappears.